La Loi des montagnes

This is a review of the Austrian version of the film, which is available on the R2 Edition Filmmuseum DVD. I believe it is also available in the States on Kino DVD in the truncated American version that has a different sentiment.

Blind Husbands is a story about folks holidaying in the alps (Cortina specifically). The main characters are a famous American surgeon, his wife Maguerite, and Leutnant von Steuben, a German military man (the filmmuseum English subtitles are a bit misleading here because they translate the intertitles referring to him as an impostor, whereas I believe von Stroheim's intention was to portray him as someone unfit to wear the uniform rather than literally not allowed to wear it). Von Steuben is played by von Stroheim himself.

He's meant to be a philanderer of married women. He looks the part, excepting that he is actually very short, shorter in fact than Maguerite. The world may have changed a lot in ninety years, but I doubt the women back then were too different from women today who are generally unable to take the advances of men shorter than themselves seriously.

I'll give the world and the female race the benefit of the doubt for the movie's sake. Von Steuben is after a clinch with Maguerite, but he's already had a squeeze with two of the hotel serving girls by the time he gets round to her. He's got a soft target really, because the husband is much too self-involved to notice that his wife is feeling lonely and in need of rekindling. Obviously where the title "Blind Husbands" arises from.

There's quite a lovely dinner scene outside the hotel in Cortina at night, there's all these paper lanterns in lines interspersed with the permanent hotel lanterns, very pretty really. Maguerite excuses herself from the hubbub and goes inside to play the piano. Whilst sat at the piano we see her head shot against a totally black background, quite an unusual shot for a film of any era. It's at this point that she appears totally alone, not just lonely, but alone. Back to the normal shot and Steuben has sidled in. He picks up a violin and starts to play a duet. What a powerful thing to do to one in such a suggestive frame of mind! Part two of the plan is to buy her the marquetry box that hubby was too busy to notice that she wanted. It's apparently two hundred years old, the design on the lid is all lozenges and grains, really reminded me very much of a Matisse type pattern, we get a lovely close up of it.

As it happens there are another two shots against a dark background, one of a bell ringing in the bell tower (to mourn the dead) and one of von Steuben pointing his grubby finger at Maguerite.

Most of the film basically concerns the von Steuben/Maguerite cat and mouse game. Can't blame him for chasing Maguerite really, my favourite shot of her was her wearing these lovely antique sunglasses with wildflowers in the back of her alpinist hat band. The movie is all shot really quite sympathetically, I'd almost call it realism, a surprising term for a 1919 film! According to others the level of mise en scene is apparently not up to Foolish Wives or Greed standard, but I'll go with it on an absolute basis.

If you see the movie as containing realism, then the ending is a bit of a cop-out, a sop to dramatic cliché. However we'll let Erich off as it still kind of works. The movie turns into a bit of a bergfilm at the end, American superman, surgeon, strong, weakling German braggart, this being totally exposed as they climb the mountain, having been rather sotto voce before.

The only silly part of the film concerns the shadow of an eagle, which is blatantly produced by a crude silhouette hanging on the end of a wire (unless eagles can fly backwards), yikes! Other than that though I thought the movie was brilliant.

"Blind Husbands" is a film in which Von Stroheim both directed and acted. The story seems somewhat routine now, but was considered racy for its day. It concerns a rather bland American doctor and his neglected wife on vacation in the Alps who cross paths with Lieutenant Erich Von Steuben (Von Stroheim), a military man with an eye for the ladies. He pursues the doctor's wife while the doctor is preoccupied with climbing the local mountains. Its main features are that the characters are well-developed compared with other films of the 1910's and also that the running time is a mere 90 minutes compared with later Von Stroheim efforts where he wound up going wild and shooting hours of film.

Blind Husbands (1919)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A doctor (Sam DeGrasse) and his wife (Francelia Billington) travel to the Dolemites in Northern Italy where their rocky marriage shows. The doctor pays very little attention to his beautiful wife, which an Austrian military officer (Erich von Stroheim) notices and decides to try and seduce her. After viewing this film I must admit that I was rather shocked about all the positive reviews it has received over the past several decades. Apparently the film was very popular when it was first released, which is shocking too because I found the film to be way too simple. Half way through I really started to think I was watching a film by D.W. Griffith due to how simple the story structure was. It's pretty simple as we have a lazy husband, a bored wife and a jerk who wants her. There's no problem in keeping all of this simple but the issue I had with the entire film is that I found all the characters to be under-written. We never learn why the doctor is so uninterested in his wife. We never learn why the wife puts up with it. She never mentions anything to the husband and instead just sits back doing nothing. We get a few hints at the type of person the military officer is but von Stroheim's story really doesn't give him too many details either. This type of simple storytelling can be effective but I found a lot of the 91-minutes here just to wonder on without anything either going for them or the scenes just leading to no where. Many of them just run on and on for no apparent reason so perhaps a good ten-minutes edited out would have helped the flow of the film. The issues with the story are the main problem and the rest is pretty good. The performances by the three leads make the film worth viewing and of course von Stroheim stands out as the creepy. You can tell he's having a good time playing this jerk and it looks rather effortless so perhaps he's just playing himself. The opening credits explain the situation of the film and it's written as if the director was trying to explain himself to many husbands out there. I found Billington to be extremely effective as well as she does a very good job at showing the character's boredom without going over the top. Another plus is the vision of the director as each scene has a very nice look and the cinematography really packs a nice punch. BLIND HUSBANDS is far from a bad movie but at the same time I just didn't think there was enough here to make it a classic or something that is a must see.

Blind Husbands (1919) : Brief Review -

Erich von Stroheim's extremist tale of masculine mistakes before he showed feminine faults in Foolish Wives (1922). Erich von Stroheim was an extremist when it came to films that showed feminine and masculine stuff from the perspective of married couples. Of course, that extramarital relationship thing drew a thin line between the acidic forms of female and male. When I saw Foolish Wives, I was stunned by his vision. I just couldn't believe that he made such an erotic film in 1922. Today, when I am just done watching Blind Husbands, I'm even more impressed. And believe me, it hasn't got anything to do with my male ego. At first I thought that this would hurt my male ego or satisfy that feminine anger, but I had no further thoughts of hating anything while watching it. I also realised that this film has given birth to the idea of an ignored wife - with different theories and conclusions, of course. Like, I remember David Lean's "Brief Encounter" (1945), Satyajit Ray's "Charulata" (1964) and "Ghare Baire" (1989), which all had the same idea of an ignored wife falling for the third man. And in the beginning credits, this film makes an extreme speech by saying, "People always blame the third man, but what about the husband?" That's so true. We never really thought that way. With that topic, Blind Husbands has that power to spark a debate even after 103 years, today in 2022. Stroheim excels as an actor and also as a director. Sam De Grasse and Francelia Billington looked great together even though they didn't have many scenes together. The intertitles and screenplay keep you intrigued, and the cinematography is decent. A bit too simple a film, but for 1919, I guess it was too much, especially when you learn the fact that many marriages were actually broken by 'the third man', just like this film says. Overall, a great effort for contemporary filmmaking, if not a great fllm.

RATING - 7/10*

By - #samthebestest.

Wow--is this the SAME director that was known for his obsessive need to film and re-film and re-film ad nauseum? Is this this the director who made GREED at over nine hours and insisted it not be cut any further? Is this the same director whose work was severely limited because the studios grew tired of his inflexibility and excessive spending? None of this appears to be the case when you watch this simple film, but all are amazingly true--just not evident in this film. Somehow, von Stroheim was able to complete a film that is simple, a reasonable length and well worth seeing. In fact, he also co-stars in this movie and does a fine job playing an adventurous cad.

The plot is pretty simple. A husband has a tendency to take his wife for granted while on vacation to the Dolemites (a mountain range in Northern Italy). A soldier and adventurer, von Stroheim, sees this and slowly tries to seduce the lonely wife. How all this works out as well as the beautifully filmed conclusion I'll leave to you to figure out on your own. This is a morality play that for its day isn't too preachy and is sure to entertain.